Return of the Kehr Capsule of the Week: The Three Caballeros (1945)

One of the forgotten masterworks of Disney animation (even Disney had contempt for it: it’s always cut for theatrical reissue). It’s plotless and crazy—a Fantasia in which the classical music has been replaced by South American chica-boom-boom, the animation free of cultural pretensions. “Free” may actually be an understatement: no other Disney feature achieved this level of exuberant abstraction, or displayed the same sheer pleasure in the magic of the animator’s art. How this one eluded the head audience for so long is a mystery, but even in these straight times it’s a rush, with Donald Duck, Joe Carioca, and Panchito the rooster barreling through a kaleidoscopic South America of exotic scenery and barely sublimated sexual enticement (1945).